Author: Tim McAleenan Jr.

With the rise of online price-checking, the profit margins on new cars have fallen dramatically over the past ten years. In 1995, the average markup on a car was almost 17%. As in, if you paid $39,250 for a new vehicle back then, approximately $25,000 covers the dealer’s cost of purchasing the vehicle from the manufacturer, and the remaining $4,250 represents the dealer’s cut in the transaction for getting you the vehicle.

Because people comparison shop and prioritize the cheapest price over nearly everything else, profit margins in the sector have fallen to 2.8% in 2017. That is a punishing drop in profits. A similar transaction with a $25,000 base would only deliver $700 in profits to the dealership on cars that cost $25,700 pre-tax to purchase.

If you lived in St. Louis during the late 1990s, it is difficult to capture the hysteria that surrounded Mark McGwire after his trade from the Oakland Athletics at the 1997 trade deadline. In just 51 games as a Cardinal that year, McGwire managed to hit 24 home runs, a precursor to the home run record he would set the following year at 70 and the 65 to come the year after.

I was too young at the time to appreciate the ominous impending cloud of the steroid and performance-enhancing drug scandal, though my sense of the era was that hometown fans overlooked any speculation about steroid use concerning the players on their team but were quick to accuse the sluggers on rival teams.

Very few people know the name of Thomas Fitzsimons. He was one of the least well-known Founding Fathers of the United States who usually played a subordinate role to some other key figure such that historical glory has proved elusiveness.

Nevertheless, Fitzsimons could claim to be one of the most prosperous of all the founding fathers, building an estate much larger than that of his peers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even Benjamin Franklin.

Fitzsimons was born in Ballykilty, in County Cork, Ireland in 1741. This was the worst time to be born into the world in the entire history of Ireland. The history books recall this great famine as “The Year of the Slaughter” (or the “Biliain an Air”) because the potatoes failed to an oomycete infection, the grains frosted, the milk spoiled, and the lakes were both frigid and contaminated. These conditions resulted in the death of over a third of Ireland’s population.

A few months ago, a friend of mine—who is a lawyer, no less!—got involved in a dilemma in which he wrote a check to a construction company that was post-dated, and the construction company deposited it immediately.

He had just finished getting a deck added to his backyard, and he had a final payment due for approximately $4,800. He had $3,500 in his bank account at the time the work was completed on a Tuesday—the same date that the construction company requested final payment.

My friend wrote a check for the $4,800, mentioned that he didn’t get paid until Friday, and requested that the construction company deposit the check a day or two after his pay day. Sure enough, the construction company deposited the check the next day, and the bank processed it and my friend had a negative -$1,300 or so balance in his account.

Since 1988, California juries have awarded approximately $42 billion in damages to victims of mesothelioma that have dealt with the cancer that manifests itself two to four decades after asbestos exposure.

Unfortunately for the victims, companies have been able dodge asbestos liability by filing for bankruptcy, establishing a trust fund for future mesothelioma litigation which limits the recovery potential for the affected persons that bring the lawsuit, and then continue on with their business as if they didn’t leave behind a trail of cancer-inducing harm in their wake.

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